Bug 212932 - DateTime is not very accessible on Mac OS X
Summary: DateTime is not very accessible on Mac OS X
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX
Alias: None
Product: Platform
Classification: Eclipse Project
Component: SWT (show other bugs)
Version: 3.4   Edit
Hardware: Macintosh Mac OS X - Carbon (unsup.)
: P3 normal (vote)
Target Milestone: ---   Edit
Assignee: Carolyn MacLeod CLA
QA Contact:
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords: accessibility
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2007-12-13 15:54 EST by Carolyn MacLeod CLA
Modified: 2010-07-28 18:41 EDT (History)
2 users (show)

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Description Carolyn MacLeod CLA 2007-12-13 15:54:39 EST
VoiceOver doesn't read the date of a Carbon ClockControl with type MonthDayYear. It only reads the numeric values of the text fields. For example, when the month field has focus VO says "10 edit text". 

This is a known bug at Apple, and I even opened a new radar to track it.
However, I doubt that it will be fixed.

The same is true of other ClockControl settings, such as for time.

VoiceOver does, however, correctly  read the date of a Cocoa NSDatePicker control. So it is possible to make the Carbon ClockControl (an AXDateField) emulate the Cocoa control (an AXDateTimeArea) for accessibility purposes.

Unfortunately, the AXDateTimeArea role and the AXDateTimeComponents attribute are not public and not documented, so they could possibly change in future.

AXValue is a CFDateRef. So we would need to convert the LongDateTime from the Carbon ClockControl (kControlClockLongDateTag) to a CFDateRef - not sure how to do that.

The AXDateTimeComponents map to the appropriate combination of NSDatePickerElementFlag values found in NSDatePickerCell.h.
Comment 1 Carolyn MacLeod CLA 2007-12-13 16:03:35 EST
Scott, can you confirm that AXDateTimeArea and AXDateTimeComponents are undocumented? Do you know if they ever will become public?

Do you happen to have code somewhere that converts from LongDateTime to CFDateRef?

Thanks!
Comment 2 Scott Kovatch CLA 2010-07-28 18:41:45 EDT
Wow, this is an old bug. And I see I was asked something 3 years ago. :-) 

The DateTime control now works as expected in Cocoa because we're using a standard control. Carbon accessibility won't be changing anytime soon, so this is a WONTFIX.